In both commercial and home settings, it is difficult to visualize how the pieces of furniture or equipment will appear in a given setting or room. The aesthetic appearance of one furniture layout as compared with another are hard to visualize; such difficulty makes the decoration and arrangement of furniture within the home frustrating and time consuming. In a commercial setting, the functional relationship of furniture and office equipment are difficult to ascertain without a module layout of these pieces in their setting.
In the home, visualization of a furniture layout may be obtained by the laborious rearrangement of the present furniture. A greater problem is presented when new pieces of furniture have to be added to a presently decorated room. Alternatively, a draftsman may draw a proposed layout sketch illustrating either a plan or a perspective view of the arrangement of pieces. However, it is difficult to readily rearrange the drawn pieces without completely making a new sketch. As a result, a large number of hours may be spent in providing a number of sketches until that modular layout that is acceptable from a functional or aesthetic point of view is realized.
A more practical solution resides in the use of models that may be readily rearranged upon a layout board. If the placement of a furniture module is not aesthetically appealing or functional, it may be readily moved to a series of locations until the "right" placement is found for that piece of furniture or equipment. To be effective, these modules must be accurate and realistic so that the final layout may simulate, in a manner as closely as possible, the actual appearance of the room. U.S. Pat. No. 2,941,314 of Schwieger discloses a display case having two sections in which are fixedly disposed plates. A grid-like sheet is disposed over each plate and a set of furniture modules may be arranged upon the plates in the desired room arrangement. In particular, the plates may be made of a partial ferrous metal. Each of the furniture modules includes a permanent magnet, whereby its module may be attached to the plate. Each section of the display case is connected to the other by a hinge, whereby the sections may be closed on each other and secured by a catch. Since each plate is affixedly secured to each section, the hinges are designed so that they may be separated to permit the removal of one section along with the plan and models so that it can be easily carried to and compared with different locations of the room to be arranged. The sections when closed and locked by the catch form a carrying case, whereby the models and the plates and planning sheets may be carried about. The disclosed modules do not permit relatively easy copying in that separate permanent magnets are attached to each of the furniture models. In addition, it would be difficult to superimpose one furniture module on another.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,659,353 of D'Agrosa discloses a method of preparing a modular layout, whereby a sheet made of a magnetically attractive material is provided for receiving and supporting a sheet of a magnetically permeable material. Sets of lines are disposed upon the sheet to define a grid, whereby a plurality of modules resembling furniture may be arranged on the grid. The furniture modules are made of a magnetically attractive material that may be disposed upon the surface of the magnetically permeable sheet and held thereon by the magnetic forces as established between the sheet and the furniture modules. The flexible sheet of magnetically attractive material and the sheet of magnetically permeable material are in turn supported by a rigid frame member so that these sheets may be easily transported and moved to a work table, whereby conventional photographic reproduction apparatus may take a negative of a particular arrangement of the modules. A conventional positive print may then be reproduced from this negative. The method described by the D'Agrosa patent '353 involves a rather elaborate photographic procedure, wherein a photographic negative is first taken, next a positive print is reproduced, and only then the positive image is easily reproduced on readily available office reproduction equipment. The use of three distinct elements, namely the tray, the magnetically attractive sheet and the magnetically permeable sheet do not readily lend themselves to easy reproduction on office reproduction equipment.
In contrast to the noted D'Agrosa patent '353 and Schwieger patent '314, U.S. Pat. No. 2,984,020 of Levitas describes apparatus for arranging furniture to provide a perspective view of the furniture modules. The furniture modules of Levitas include strips extending therefrom that permit each furniture module to be held in place by clips attached to the side of a baseboard. It is evident that this manner of securing the furniture modules to a baseboard does not permit the ready rearrangement of the furniture modules, much less the reproduction of these modules by readily available office reproduction equipment.
If it is desired to arrange furniture modules into a perspective view, it is necessary to place one module to overlie an earlier placed module. For example, as shown in FIG. 1 of Levitas patent '020, a cabinet module is first arranged on the perspective layout board and thereafter a desk module is placed so that a portion of the desk module overlays the cabinet module. Levitas suggests that each of the desk and cabinet modules is held by a strip extending to the edge. It has been found that the use of the strips is cumbersome and it would be desired to employ a magnetic device with each furniture module to permit the module to be releasably retained upon the layout board. A review of the above discussed D'Agrosa patent '353 and the Schwieger patent '314 indicates that only plan layouts are disclosed and that their furniture modules are not designed to be layed one-over-the-other as may be required to provide a perspective layout.